Advent Calendars, Day 20

We’re getting down to the wire here folks. Today we get more accessories, but tenuous connection if any to previous entries…

Advent 20

For Castle, we get a really nice table and chair with gold metallic bowl and goblet (plus extra goblet and brown cylinders). So I guess our maiden from a few days ago is an innkeeper after all. Though of course the innkeeper in Stormwind is a blonde.

On the City side, we get a really nice pallet jack. Our train worker from yesterday is supposed to use it, I guess, so I guess he uses it to load cargo onto boxcars?

Advent Calendars, Day 19

Today we get a bearded railway maintenance worker for the City calendar, and a bowl of produce for Castle.

Advent 19

Neither is particularly remarkable, though the scale on the fruit & veggies is a bit out of whack with minifigs. No surprise, as they were originally made for Belville. But on the City side we get new minifigures two days in a row! That’s unusual for an advent calendar; usually they’re about every third day.

As for fitting these into any kind of coherent story, I could say that the produce is for sale by a food vendor, so clearly yesterday’s minifig was selling food in Stormwind, but the only kind of apples I’ve ever seen in WoW are red and I’ve never seen a carrot there, so that is tenuous at best.

LEGO Cruise Ship Contest

There are LEGO building contests organized by LEGO hobbyists all the time, but this may be the first time a company (other than LEGO itself) is soliciting entries in a contest. STX Europe, a shipyard that builds some of the world’s largest cruise ships, is sponsoring a building contest using LEGO Digital Designer.

Oasis

The winner of the highly challenging Innovative series will fly to Miami, and supervise his/her model being constructed in the Miami Seatrade Cruise Shipping event March 16-19, 2009. The winner of the Oasis series will be rewarded with an Oasis of the Seas engraved Apple iPod music player, as well as three models of his/her own Oasis LEGO design in a gift pack. The winner model of the Oasis series will be used as a corporate gift by STX Europe.

I am sure there will be some very impressive entries, even though personally I’m not a fan of the LDD software.

Via BrickJournal blog.

RoadRailer Trailer

This cargo trailer is both a railcar and a trailer for a truck. The rail wheelsets are removable, and the road wheels are then available to be towed down the road. I built this many years ago and it’s been on numerous BayLTC train layouts, but I never put pictures online until now.

Train car Road trailer

I first learned about these interesting hybrid vehicles on the PBS television show Tracks Ahead. They are a real thing made by Wabash National. Each trailer has permanently-attached road wheels, and can have railroad wheelsets attached for use in a train. The trailers are hitched to each other, with the wheelset mounted on the rear of the trailer, and a special wheelset is attached to the front one.

See the Flickr photoset for detailed pictures from various angles, or click for a slideshow.

By the way, when I posted my Gondola car, I said that was my first train car MOC. Technically I guess the RoadRailers are, but the Gondola is more of a “train car” in the traditional sense, whereas the RoadRailers are more road trailers that can be carried as a part of a train in my mind.

Advent Calendars, Day 18

Today both calendars bring new minifigs. In the Castle calendar, we have a female NPC (non-player character), probably an enchanting vendor, with broom and a rat. I wish it had been a cat instead of a rat, so I could say it was the Crazy Cat Lady from Elwynn Forest. On the City side, we have a suspect for the interrogation chair of yesterday. Will tomorrow bring a waterboard?

Advent 18

Shasta Teardrop Travel Trailer

My latest vehicle MOC is a camping trailer, based on the 1960’s Shasta travel trailer. Click the image to view the set on Flickr, or check out the slideshow.

Shasta travel trailer

I built it for the campground scene that Loren built for BayLUG’s exhibit at the Museum of American History in Palo Alto. The display will be open to the public through January 11, 2009, on Fridays through Sundays. If you’re in the local area, come on and check it out one of these weekends.

I had made two RV’s before this, a Class C motorhome and a “toy hauler” fifth wheel trailer. But since I didn’t think Loren’s campground would work with just two campsites filled, I got inspired to make another. I built it to be compatible with the “Range Rover” from the new 7635 Horse Trailer set, partly because I didn’t want to also have to build a tow vehicle, and partly because I really like the look of that car.

As for the trailer design, I wanted to build something iconic, and thought about doing an Airstream but the curves were too complex. I thought of the “teardrop” trailers, since they have flat straight sides. I did some image searches online and found a few images of the Shasta trailer, and decided to build that:

Daisy Tin can tourist Shasta Bay

Advent Calendars, Day 16

I guess yesterday’s model represented the Alchemy profession rather than Cooking, since today’s model appears to represent an alchemy supplies shop:

Alchemy supplies

On the City calendar, we are supposed to get a photographer minifig, but I got a mountain climber:

Day 16 box image Mountain climber

Dark green legs FTW!

Alert readers will recall that I had a mistake in the Day 2 City calendar as well. I wonder if anyone else is finding these errors?

Advent Calendars, Day 15

No new figs today but more accessories for our previous figs. The warlock now has a cooking fire and cauldron. I guess she’s leveling her cooking skill? I don’t know any recipes that call for snake meat in WoW though.

On the City side, the diver has one of those underwater self propelled units. Probably a good thing because with that life vest he’ll need some help getting down to any depth.

Advent 15: New Stuff

Here we see the figs with their new stuff. The diver had better watch his feet with that propeller so close and unshrouded!

Advent 15: With Figs

But one thing I noticed just now was that the diver has the same face as the Good Twin and Evil Twin! I guess that means he must be Chaotic Twin. Here’s the family portrait:

Advent 15: Family Portrait

Happy Feast of Winter Veil!

Advent Calendars, Day 14

Today the Castle theme gets a new figure – this time it’s a human warlock, casting a shadow bolt spell. She has apparently run out of Soul Shards and cannot summon her Voidwalker. Perhaps tomorrow’s set will provide a minion for her?

Meanwhile the diver from yesterday gets his fins along with a “diver down” flag buoy thingy and life vest. The fins are attached to the sprue from molding. Remember when 1×1 round plates came that way? Ah those were the days…. Anyway, I don’t see how he’s going to dive down very far to use his speargun with that life vest on!

Advent 14